Reverse Labs

Before Reverse Labs was born, Eugenio and I had an initial concept that was to create two immersive spaces that would encourage the desire to learn. One space was for an educational game and one was a ‘what if’ environment that promoted relaxation and reflection on that learnt material. The spaces were reminiscent of blanket forts and cloud watching spaces that had an element of personalisation where users could contribute to the structures theme / colour / shape using augmented reality. Both these spaces would use either AR or full 360 projections with hand and skeleton detection, so you could interact with media and materials, choosing your personalised methods of learning.

The two initial spatial concepts

Through iteration this then developed into a physical space that you built and would adapt depending on the subject you were learning. This structure was modular and could be easily assembled with the technology integrated into the structural pieces. We played with the design of modular pieces and how the structure could allow you to learn on the go, or through encouraging you to move or interact with the displayed information in different positions to aid your memory.

Some example uses of a modular physical structure

The action of building the learning environment was important as it integrated embodied learning into the design, where the actions of you building are used to reinforce your memory of what is learnt in that space. From here we decided to develop further into the embodied learning concept. More than building an environment, we were curious how we could use the body to teach and learn school subjects that are often taught in a classroom but could be experienced on a completely new level through movement and embodiment, and also how we could use AR and VR to explore a subject through methods we can’t conventionally use such as changing our scale, perception of time and perspective within an environment.

Becoming particle scale

Reverse Labs was then created as an amalgamation of all our ideas; a company that can produce a series of demo videos and games that allow you to freely explore a subject of your choosing, where the use of embodied learning lets you become a part of a digital narrative and explore theories in the most immersive ways. Using haptics to give you hints and feedback of your movements, you can become a hydrogen particle, moving in ways that create heat and partaking in the process of evaporation or grow as big as the Moon and move the tides depending on your body positioning. Both are examples of how we are currently utilising the combination of VR/AR, embodied learning and haptic feedback to create educational experiences.

We intend to continue developing these ideas to create further demos with a variety of free exploration narratives that can re-introduce the building of physical objects to reinforce memory and continue the development of haptic feedback and the impact this can have on learning theory.

Interactive Architecture Lab

The Interactive Architecture Lab is a multi-disciplinary research group and Masters Programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Interested in the Behaviour and Interaction of Things, Environments and their Inhabitants.